Letting your first property? Start here.

You are not alone; a lot of people become landlords by circumstance, not by plan — an inherited house, a move, a property that would not sell. Start with the tenant, not the paperwork: get the property advertised, reference whoever applies, and put a proper written tenancy in place. The legal duties (safety certificates, deposit protection, the documents you must hand over) hang off that tenancy, and doing them in order is far less daunting than facing them as a pile. This page walks the order; the app keeps the order for you.

No — but you do need to get a handful of things right, because some of them decide whether you can ever get the property back. The big ones: protect the deposit and serve the prescribed information, give the right move-in documents, and keep Gas Safety, EICR and EPC current. You do not need to memorise them. LetCompliance scores each property 0 to 100 against exactly these duties and tells you what is missing, so "am I compliant?" has an answer instead of a worry.

Almost always, yes. If the property is on a residential mortgage, letting it out without permission usually breaches the mortgage terms. Most lenders will either grant "consent to let" (often for a fixed period) or ask you to move to a buy-to-let mortgage. It is a quick conversation and far cheaper than being found in breach — do it before the tenant moves in, not after. Check the exact requirement with your own lender.

Maybe. Mandatory HMO licensing applies if five or more people from two or more households share the property. Separately, many councils run selective or additional licensing schemes covering all private lets, or smaller HMOs, in specific wards — so a single flat can still need a licence depending on where it is. Always check your own council before letting; renting an unlicensed property that needs one carries heavy penalties. Our HMO licence checker and licence-fee tables help you find out.

The biggest shift is that, since 1 May 2026, there are no fixed-term ASTs and no Section 21 "no-fault" notice. Every new tenancy is a periodic assured tenancy that rolls month to month, rent increases go through a Section 13 notice once a year, and to get the property back you need a ground — for example moving in or selling. It is genuinely simpler to start under than the old system, because there is one tenancy type; the care is all in doing the possession side correctly if you ever need to.

For a new assured tenancy in England: a written statement of the core terms, the deposit’s Prescribed Information (within 30 days of taking it), a valid Gas Safety certificate if there is gas, the EICR (electrical report), the EPC, and the Renters’ Rights Act information sheet. Getting these served — and being able to prove you served them — matters, because gaps can block a later possession claim. The move-in pack assembles them for you and records that they were sent.

Reference them through a regulated UK credit reference agency: credit history, affordability against the rent, and any adverse data, plus a Right to Rent check which is a legal requirement. It is the one decision in the whole process you cannot undo once they move in, so it is worth doing properly rather than on a gut feeling or a quick chat. You can run it here, pay per check, and keep the result on the tenancy.

For most tenancies the deposit is capped at five weeks’ rent (six weeks if the annual rent is £50,000 or more). Once you take it you have 30 days to protect it in a government-backed scheme (DPS, TDS or mydeposits) and to give the tenant the Prescribed Information. Miss the 30-day window and you can be ordered to pay the tenant one to three times the deposit — and, until you put it right, you lose the ability to use certain possession grounds. It is the single most common, and most expensive, first-time slip.

For one property you can absolutely start on a spreadsheet — plenty do. The reason not to is that the things that go wrong (a missed deposit deadline, an expired certificate, an unrecorded document) are exactly the things a spreadsheet does not chase you about. LetCompliance is free for your first property, no card, precisely so a first-time landlord can keep it right from day one; rent collection, tax prep and more properties come on the paid plans when you need them.

Rental profit is taxable and, from April 2026, landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 report it digitally under Making Tax Digital (the threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028). As a new landlord the useful habit is to log income and expenses from the first month rather than reconstructing a year later. LetCompliance keeps them in the SA105 shape your Self Assessment uses and produces the MTD-dated quarterly figures, so the tax side is a by-product of running the let rather than a January panic.